Fabrication of flexible microlens arrays for parallel super-resolution imaging

The development of optical microscopy has greatly promoted the progress of biological fields, providing outstanding observation tools for genetics, molecular biology, and bioengineering technology, from the macro- to the micro-scale. Owing to the optical diffraction limit, the imaging resolution of traditional optical microscopy is limited. Recently, the use of microspheres has been demonstrated to aid the capability to realize super-resolution imaging under white light illumination; however, using this approach, the imaging field of view is only a few microns, due to the size of the microspheres. In this paper, we fabricated microlens arrays by embedding microspheres into polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) films. Using this method, we have successfully achieved parallel imaging under the sub-diffraction-limited resolution using multiple microspheres with a magnification up to ×2.59–×2.99, and the observed results are consistent with finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation results. Furthermore, two imaging modes were developed: the microlens array-based dynamic scanning imaging mode and the stochastic microlens array region imaging overlay reconstruction mode, a surface image of 900 μm² was presented stitched with 210 images. This study combines the advantages of parallel imaging and dynamic imaging to increase efficiency and observation range.